Italian musher takes on Iditarod

AMY MENEREY/Frontiersman reporter

HOUSTON - As the only Italian competing in this year's Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, Dodo Perri says he's ready to run.

Perri is an experienced European musher who has raced in eight Alpirods and owns a mushing school in Italy, but he wouldn't have been able to run the 33rd Iditarod without the help of Mat-Su musher Lynda Plettner.

"I chose musher Lynda, because Lynda, she has [run] 11 Iditarods," said Perri, from his temporary home at Plettner Kennels. "She knows she likes to teach and she is good teacher."

It is clear Perri knows what he is talking about - and he has no problem singing Plettner's praises.

Perri met Plettner little more than a year ago, he said, and instantly liked her.

"I could see the power of this woman," Perri said, describing the first time he met Plettner at the start of an Iditarod qualifying race, the Klondike 200/300, in Big Lake. Apparently the race's start date had been moved, more than once, and Plettner was demanding her money back from race officials when Perri first laid eyes on her - gaining her instant respect, in Perri's opinion.

Already an experienced musher, Perri said Plettner suits him well as a mentor.

"I tell her, 'When I need you, I need you, and you can tell me 'cause I can take it,'" Perri said, adding that they don't always agree. "For musher to musher, we have different head, different thinking sometimes; we have different experiences."

Perri's mushing experience began in 1986 when he ran and won the Italian Sled Dog Championship, but his love affair with the outdoors that eventually brought him to Alaska began 26 years ago.

At the age of 20, Perri discovered snow. Having been raised in the city of Courmayeur, Italy, he had never seen snow, he said, until an army buddy asked him if he liked to ski.

"'What is ski?'" he asked the friend, and soon found himself on the slopes. After leaving the army, he and a partner bought a discotheque. They spent their nights working and their days skiing, sleeping about three hours a night - Perri was hooked on the snow and the cold.

"I love cold, the cold is part of my life." Perri said.

A book about the adventures of Italian Prince Luigi Amedeo di Savoia's quest to reach the North Pole in 1900 piqued Perri's interest in cold-weather expeditions and dog mushing, he said.

In 1985, Perri came to Alaska and had his first taste of the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race. He was present to see history made as Libby Riddles became the first woman to win the Iditarod. He took in everything he saw, making plans for the future.

"I steal with my eyes," he said. "I steal everything."

After purchasing some dogs, he returned to Italy to run and win the Italian race, followed in 1988 by his first Alpirod, a race that crosses the Italian, French and Austrian Alps, which he also promoted and sponsored.

Perri attended the Sled Dog Demonstrative Program in the Lillehammer Olympics in 1994 and began a collaboration with the International Federation of Sled Dog Sports, promoting sled dog sports.

He also met many well-known Iditarod competitors there, including Tim Osmar, Martin Buser, Riddles, Roxy Wright and DeeDee Jonrowe, to name a few.

Perri then turned his attention once again to Savoia and the North Pole, and in 2001 - with the Pope's personal blessing - he and a team that included a Vatican priest and two of Savoia's descendants made their way by dog team to the Pole. There, they celebrated Easter Mass and planted a large cross.

In addressing the expedition, Pope John Paul II wrote, "By planting the 'tree of the cross' and renewing the Eucharistic sacrifice at the 'ends of the earth,' you intend to recall that human beings only find their true dimension when they can fix their gaze on Christ and abandon themselves totally to him.

In a special way, by celebrating the divine sacrifice at the North Pole on Easter Day itself, you want to make the proclamation of the risen Lord ring out loudly, to 'the ends of the earth' (Acts 1: 8)."

And it was truly a religious experience, Perri said. "It was very silent, very exciting," he said. "Same emotion like reaching top of mountain."

Perri's goals since the expedition have focused on the promotion of mushing in Italy and running the Iditarod - which brought him to a pleasantly furnished small room at Plettner Kennels, where last week he once again went over the details of his next big adventure.

After a failed attempt last year, he believes he is ready for the Iditarod this time, and places much of his faith in his training with Plettner - and the fact that she is a woman.

"I like to mush in Alaska, but people, they don't believe the woman - they don't consider the woman. Why is this?" he asked. "In Europe and Italy, we believe the woman first. Women are very important part of life."

Perri's future beyond this year's Iditarod includes another woman, girlfriend Maria Rita Menichelli, and Alaska.

"I plan to move to Alaska next year with my girlfriend," Perri said. "I want to die here. I love mushing

and Alaska."